Railway can't shirk its liability towards ticket refund: Forum

A consumer forum here has said that Railways cannot shirk its liability towards refund of tickets as it asked the PSU behemoth's northern zonal branch to pay over Rs 2,000 to a man after it failed to refund him the money for his cancelled tickets.

New Delhi: A consumer forum here has said that Railways cannot shirk its liability towards refund of tickets as it asked the PSU behemoth's northern zonal branch to pay over Rs 2,000 to a man after it failed to refund him the money for his cancelled tickets.

New Delhi District Consumer Redressal Forum, presided by C K Chaturvedi, asked Northern Railways to pay Rs 2,140 to south Delhi resident Sushil Kumar Goyal, who had cancelled his wait listed tickets but did not get the refund money.

"Railways cannot shirk its own liability towards refund of tickets. Once the wait listed tickets were not confirmed, the onus was on Opposite Party (Railways) to refund the ticket. Such non-payment of ticket fare constitutes imperfection in service," the forum said.

It directed Railways to refund the price of ticket, Rs 1140, and also to pay Rs 1,000 as compensation for harassment for non-payment of fare.

Goyal had told the forum that he had booked a wait listed ticket from Delhi Sarai Rohilla to Jammu Tavi by Duronto Express for travelling on May 26, 2012 by paying Rs 1,140.

However, as the ticket could not be confirmed, he got it cancelled but the Railways failed to settle the claim.
The Railways, however, had told the forum that the request for cancellation was not made within 12 hours of departure as per rules, hence, the money could not be refunded.